A Different Tomorrow
by Alfa290
Summary: The Breach, the Dirac Sea, two names in two worlds for the same thing. Shinji's battle with Leliel creates a temporary hole in space and time leading him to a very different world that has a very similar problem. Can Shinji face his demons? Can he return home? Can he truly be the hero everyone says he is?
1. The Left Turn At Sydney

A Different Tomorrow

Shinji let a sigh escape. It was a little over twelve years now. Twelve years of fighting in wars he never wanted. At least now he had some perspective on why he should fight, unlike before. The major got off the bench in the pilot changing room. It was almost time for the drop. One final run Stacker had called it.

Stepping onto the catwalk overlooking the launch bay of the shatterdome Shinji could see the grim looks on everyone's faces. The win in Hong Kong was a little too close for comfort. The only mechs to make it out of that debacle were Unit 01, Striker Eureka, and a very dinged up Gypsy Danger.

He was going to miss the Wei Tangs but even more so the Kaidonovskies. In all the years he had been here they were one of the few constants like the Marshal. They were part of the foundation that kept what was left of the Jaeger program together. Now, only Shinji, Herc, and the Marshal were left.

Continuing toward Unit 01's entry plug he took a moment to look over the multiple modifications she had gotten over the years. Outwardly, Shogoki was completely different from the original EVA. The purple armor of the giant had been replaced over time and was now predominately grey in color with purple and green highlights. The battery had been replaced as well now using a prototype supercell salvaged from Mammoth Apostle, before that it had been diesel engines. The shoulder pylons were replaced a few years back with a pair of large cannons taken from the wreck of Coyote Tango. Its progressive knives now took residence in sheaths on its leg and on its chest. The only exterior thing that even indicated that Unit 01 was still in there was the all too recognizable head.

Under the hood though was a different story. The entry plug system had been tweaked to be easier to maintain but was by and large the same. The biological monstrosity born of Lilith was still in there. And although he would never admit it to anyone, over the years he felt that maybe there was someone else in the EVA aside from just him. Either way, he had refused to part with the one reminder of his old life and even though it cost an arm and a leg to maintain, the PPDF let him keep it.

He got into the entry plug. _One final run_…_Time to finish what I started_, he thought. With that the twenty-six year old major and longest serving pilot in the PPDF activated his EVA.

Oo.

Shinji sank into the darkness that was the 12th angel. He could hear the shouts of Asuka demanding he had to grab onto something, anything and that she'd get him out. He could hear the desperate calls of Misato telling him to get out there. But he couldn't move. So this was it, not a bang, not a defiant roar, but a whimper.

He caught his last glimpse of sunlight as Unit 01's head sank into the Dirac Sea. His world went black and he began to wait. Several hours later he activated his EVA. In a last ditch attempt to escape he killed it and he did escape. Just not to where he expected.

Oo.

"Sir, we have the object on sonar. It's confirmed sir, it's another one them."

"All hands to battle stations. Lieutenant, what is its projected destination?"

"Sir, if it maintain its current course it will make landfall in Australia within 5 hours."

"Thank you lieutenant. Comms? Get on the horn; let the Anzacs know what's coming their way."

Oo.

"Okay, boys and girl! Orders just came down from on high that the squids found another one of these Kaiju. It will make landfall in the Sydney area within five hours. We have to make sure that doesn't happen. All right, enough chit-chat! Get to your jets, and includes you Kowalski, you old wrinkly bastard."

The engines of the various F-18s, F-22s, and F-35s filled the air as the Royal Australian Air Force took to the skies to defend their homeland; they knew most of them would not be returning.

Oo.

WARNING: POLARIS REPORT

ENERGY FIELD SPIKE DETECTED

EMISSION PATTERN: BLUE

ALERT: BREACH DETECTED

LOCATION: 34S-152E

KAIJU ALERT STATUS RED

Oo.

"Sir, POLARIS is going nuts. It's picking up a massive energy spike near Sydney consistent with the Breach."

"Do we have any assets available in the area?"

"Negative, sir, all available units are either engaging the first Kaiju or are assisting in the evacuation."

"Damn it, there must be something we can do!"

"General! The Kaiju has reached the second Breach. It got past the blockade!"

"God, help us."

Oo.

Shinji stabbed what had to be the Angel's core with all his might. In that split second the world began to spin and he felt himself being launched away. Abruptly, the darkness of the Dirac Sea was replaced with light. He was in a bay of some kind. There were military vessels with markings he didn't recognize and a giant monster that kicked him into high gear. In that instant Shinji took in his surroundings and reacted on pure instinct.

The monster in front of him was big enough to be an Angel, bizarre enough for it too, but he wasn't going to escape death once and give up. Prog knife in hand Shinji charged. The timer was ticking its way past the one minute mark for combat mode, better make this quick. The Angel slashed at him with its claws but Shinji rolled under it. With both feet planted firmly he lunged upward putting all his weight behind the blade. To his surprise his AT field was still holding strong, almost as if the Angel didn't have an AT field of its own. The clock ticked past thirty second. The prog knife easily sank into the skin of the Angel and with the force of Unit 01 behind it tore the angel in half. In his frantic stabbing to find the core and finish the Angel off Shinji almost missed it. The Angel wasn't bleeding orange, it was bleeding blue.

"Since when did they do that?" he asked himself as the lights in the entry plug switched off.

Oo.

It had been a little over an hour since the purple behemoth had appeared from a hole in the sky and completely annihilated the Kaiju in under a minute. Said Kaiju had taken a direct nuclear strike and was only slightly inconvenienced. But this thing appears and suddenly it goes belly up.

"What do you think doctor?" asked a man in a military uniform.

On the video monitor the navy was just now beginning their approach of the now limp giants.

"I think we have our solution," was the reply of Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld.

Today was certainly interesting.

Oo.

**A/N:** This was written in two hours at 10pm. No, I was not as picky as usual about grammar, spelling, and the stuff that makes good reading possible. If it rambles on let me know. I'm sorry it's sloppy but I'm fairly certain my computer is about to die on me and my desktop is a fossil from a bygone era when we still used floppy disks. I will clean this up, just not right now. This will be sporadically updated maybe every month or so. Mostly planning to use this to get around writers block and because it was really bugging me that I couldn't find any EVA/Pacific Rim crossovers I really enjoyed. They weren't bad, but I just wanted more so here it is. This should be interesting. Okay, time to get some sleep, bye.

**Edit**:

**06/24/2014 **Okay, fixed what I spotted and even added a line. The computer is feeling better but I'm currently working on the next chapter of _S__hattered Skies _and that one has priority currently.


	2. A Way

A Way

"Where am I?" came the hoarse whisper in Japanese. The attending nurse whipped around from the observation equipment at the sound. "Who are you?" asked the young black haired boy in the bed. He saw her grabbing something and speaking into it. _Is she speaking English?_ He thought foggily before slipping back into unconsciousness.

An imperceptible amount of time passed. Sometimes when Shinji awoke there was the nurse there, other times men and women in lab coats. Once he heard quite the ruckus outside his hospital room and the time after there were several men in suits at the foot of his hospital bed. So passed the first three weeks that Shinji Ikari spent in a Sydney hospital.

0-0-0-0-0

"So, what's happening Dr. Schoenfeld? I know that DARPA doesn't want me back, and things never really worked out between us. So why are you here?" Caitlin Lightcap asked.

"Because Caitlin, you're one of the best neuroscientists in a generation and we have something you would kill to see if you knew what it was," Jasper replied with a sly grin.

"Oh, and what would that be? A new piece of equipment based on something I couldn't get to work?" The bitterness in her voice was evident.

"No, I've got one better," He casually waved his hand as he continued, "How would you like to analysis the brain scans of a genetically engineered weapon and its giant cyborg? The cherry on top is that we have absolutely no idea where they came from, but we do know that they are very good at killing Kaiju."

There was a glint in Lightcap's eyes as she asked, "When can I start?"

0-0-0-0-0

They had come to see him off one last time. Everyone knew this was likely a one way trip. The younger of the two was wearing the bright yellow sundress he had bought her for her birthday. A pair of red ribbons held her hair on both sides of her head. The elder of the two had her silky black hair in a bun and was wearing her work uniform, but in Shinji's eyes they didn't detract from the beauty underneath the worn clothes of a PPDF technician.

"Hi there beautiful," he said as he approached and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"Hey there yourself," she replied, her voice straining as she pulled him into a hug. Maybe if they had more time he would have married her. The three of them could have lived a peaceful life as a family away from the desperate struggles ensuring mankind's survival. But it was not meant to be.

"I understand why you have to do this," she whispered into his shoulder. "And I know what might happen. But I don't want to accept it. You will come back, got it? You'll be here for Asuka's recital and we'll buy that apartment we were looking at in Neo-Tokyo. We'll go down the river walk and you'll propose like we used to joke about when we first met. Please come home Shinji."

By the end Mari was quietly crying as Shinji awkwardly tried to comfort her. Her younger sister came up to join the little group hug. _If only there was more time_, Shinji thought bitterly.

0-0-0-0-0

"Good work Shinji. We have all the data we need. You can get out of that thing now," Doctor Lightcap voice said into the entry plug.

"Thank you, Miss Lightcap. Beginning exit sequence," he answered. He had a small smile as he began the exit sequence, fresh air would be wonderful after hours in stale LCL. He had spent the past month going through all kinds of tests. They ran the gamut from physical and mental to combat and technical. The past week had the staff of the newly minted Pan Pacific Defense Committee trying to take apart and understand as much about the EVA as they could. The armor, weapons systems, speed, and computer systems were disassembled first and reconstructed but the meatiest part of the Evangelion was the synchronization system.

They wanted EVAs of their own. Not something that really surprised Shinji considering the position that humanity was in, in this world. However, Shinji's knowledge of what EVAs were much less how they worked was rudimentary at best so the science teams had to rely on observation. Some of those observations were rather unsettling to say the least. More than one researcher lost their lunch after they discovered that the EVA was biological by accidentally stabbing it with a forklift. How the forklift driver managed to break skin was anyone's guess.

0-0-0-0-0

"So, when is Shinji going to see a psychiatrist?" Caitlin asked as she entered the office, "Because as is, he's too unstable to be reliable. As in, not suffer from emotional breakdowns on a moment's notice."

"Our little science experiment seems to be doing fine if you ask me. He even gets along with that grumpy lieutenant colonel we picked up. The kid is fine." Jasper went back to the paperwork on his desk.

"No, he's not. We got the psych-eval back two days ago. Shinji is trying to suppress his memories and problems but that's only a temporary fix. If that dam he's built breaks in any way and we haven't dealt with his emotional reservoir, so to speak, by that time he may never be able to return to combat."

Schoenfeld steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair. "How long do you think that will be? How long before he breaks?"

"How long? He's breaking now. Whatever happened to him in his home universe, for lack of better wording, was traumatic. He has been subject to abandonment, emotional abuse, neglect, extortion, and several other things without ever going into possible post-traumatic stress from his previous fights. He was finally beginning to solve some of his problems when the rug was pulled from under him and he wound up here." Caitlin's voice had uncharacteristically been rising in volume throughout her mini-tirade.

That earned a raised eyebrow from the research director. "I'll see what I can do."

0-0-0-0-0

The park was quiet. It was… serene, yes that was the word. A family of ducks swam in the pond as the cicadas buzzed every so often. The Kyoto he remembered wasn't this nice, but at the moment Shinji didn't care. The soft breeze felt good on his face, the air was clean, and he was _not_ in a room with the various national leaders arguing over what could have been done to save Tokyo.

Onibaba had wiped the city off the map. Three quarters of the residents did not make it out in time and were killed by the monster's almost day long rampage and the ensuing hour long battle with Coyote Tango. The only known survivor that was still in the city at the time Onibaba was killed was a thirteen year old girl. Mako Mori, she was as cute as a kitten and couldn't be separated from the Marshall except for when he had to use the latrine.

However, the fallout of the incident was a mixed bag. Young Miss Mori became a rallying icon to people around the world in the fight against the Kaiju, but the lost of the Japanese capital city was keenly felt. At the time of Onibaba's attack Coyote was on exercises off the cost and had to be retrieved, refitted, and relaunched. It took most of the day and was the prime reason that Tokyo was in ruins.

One camp used that to push for the Jaeger Program and the PPDF to be shut down. Another wanted the PPDF to continue existing but under new 'more competent' management and the last group spun it to try and get funding for more Jaegers and a sonar net near where the Breach supposedly was. Shinji heaved a sigh.

"Hi mister! What's got you down?" a cheerful voice to his side asked. It sounded so familiar. When Shinji looked up his heart stopped. She looked almost exactly like her. Her hair, her eyes, even her apparent love for the color red all point to one impossible conclusion about this six or seven year old girl. The only thing off was her smile, it was an honest, unguarded smile, something Shinji had never seen on her face even once.

"Asuka! Asuka! There you are! I was so worried about you!" Another girl dressed in a button up shirt with a skirt and leggings came flying in out of the clear blue sky as far as Shinji could tell.

"What did I tell you about wandering off? What if you got lost? What would I have done then?" The black hair girl scolded the mini-Asuka.

"But Mari," Mini-Asuka whined, "I didn't get lost. Besides, I wanted to know why the man in the suit looked so sad."

"Asuka Langley Soryu…" the words died in her mouth as she got a good look at the 'man in the suit.' To be fair, Shinji was decked out in full PPDF regalia showing-off that he was a first lieutenant. She gawked for a moment at the boy her age that wore about as much tinsel as a Christmas tree before summoning the courage to say. "H-hello, my name is Mari Makinami Soryu. I-it's an honor to meet you mister…?"

"Ikari, Shinji Ikari. Well met," he replied shaking her hand. His head was still spinning but at least the pause induced by Mari's shock had given _him _some time to recover from the bombshell that had just been dropped on him. It almost made him wonder if anyone else he knew had a double here but he quickly killed the idea. That was asking for trouble.

"I'm sorry if Asuka was bothering you, sir," Mari began with a slight stutter before Shinji cut her off.

"No, it's fine, she wasn't distracting me from anything except maybe my own bad mood. Care to have a seat?" He gestured to the open spots on the bench.

"I would hate to impose."

"It'll be fine. Maybe some of your sister's energy will rub off on me." Shinji joked.

After a few hours of talking Shinji said good-bye to the young version of Asuka and her older sister Mari. He gently put the phone number Mari had given him into his pocket. On the train ride back to the hotel he mused about a making picnic for the sisters to enjoy. The thought warmed him at his core.

0-0-0-0-0

"Shinji, can you come to my office please?" asked Doctor Lightcap.

"Sure thing Doctor. Let me put the new suit away though." Shinji's deteriorating plugsuit had been replaced a week ago and the scientists were doing their best to make a sturdier version. What Shinji was wearing was the ninth iteration of the improved suit. It was, by far, the best one in Shinji opinion. It boosted his synch-ratio, had good range of motion, and was even comfortable. Something he didn't exactly associate with the skintight plugsuits.

The door closed softly as Shinji entered Doctor Lightcap's office. It was a well lit room with a nice view of the testing range. The furniture was modest and rather utilitarian. As Shinji took a seat in front of the doctor's desk she slid a manila folder to him.

"Shinji, these are orders taking you off of active duty for eight months," Lightcap began without preamble. "Also, enclosed in this folder is information on what the PPDC wants you to do whilst on rest rotation. Foremost among them is that you must regularly visit a psychologist."

Well, it was blunt Shinji had to give her that. But eight months and sending him to a shrink? He wanted to fight it. He wanted to stay on active duty so he wouldn't have to think about what he had left behind. _Orders are orders_, a voice in the back of his head whispered. Shinji would play along, but he didn't have to like it.

0+0+0+0+0

**A/N:** That's a rap people.

Chapter two, a little confusing, a little rambling but I had fun writing it. Something about not writing chronologically appeals to me. Don't worry though I'm not going to do a Memento a have the story go backwards in time but it will jump from place to place. Eventually, once I honest to God figure this whole writing a structured story thing out each piece will become more coherent.

Also, yes Mari is going to be the love interest with Asuka being relegated to being the younger sister/daughter for the pair. For now, they are not slated to be involved in the PPDF beyond Mari being a technician and the two of them moving to the Hong Kong Shatterdome. More on them later.

Shinji needs mental help. If the cast of NGE were in a real military force none of them would have passed basic screening. All of them would have failed the psychiatric evaluation in the most spectacular way possible. That is all.

Leave a comment, but not fanfic recs, seriously Tomcat, I spent the last few weeks powering through the ZnT stuff because that rec made me curious (I got lost in the depths of SpaceBattles for _weeks_ *shudder*). Some of those fics reminded me of a slow-mo train wreck, you don't want to watch but you can't look away.

Until next time, later!


End file.
